With 950 million people, India ranks second to China among the most populous countries. But since China (1) a family planning program in 1971, India has been dosing the (2) . Indians have reduced their birth rate but not nearly (3) the Chinese have. If current growth rates continue, India’s population will (4) China’s around the year 2028 (5) about 1.7 billion.Should that happen, it won’t be the (6) of the enlightened women of Kerala, a state in southern India. (7) India as a whole adds almost 20 million people a year, Kerala’s population is virtually (8) . The reason is no mystery: nearly two-thirds of Kerala women practice birth control, (9) about 40% in the entire nation.The difference (10) the emphasis put on health programs (11) birth control, by the state authorities, (12) in 1957 became India’s first elected Communist (13) . And an educational tradition and matrilineal customs in parts of Kerala help girls and boys get (14) good schooling. While one in three Indian women is (15) , 90% of those in Kerala can read and write. Higher literacy rates (16) family planning. "Unlike our parents, we know that we can do more for our children if we have (17) of them," says Laila Cherian, 33, who lives in the village of Kudamaloor. She has limited herself (18) three children-one below the national (19) of four. That kind of restraint will keep Kerala from putting added (20) on world food supplies. 3()
A. as many as
B. as well as
C. as soon as
D. as much as
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Text 2Not too many decades ago it seemed "obvious" both to the general public and to sociologists that modern society has changed people’s natural relations, loosened their responsibilities to kin and neighbors, and substituted in their place superficial relationships with passing acquaintances. However, in recent years a growing body of research has revealed that the "obvious" is not true. It seems that if you are a city resident, you typically know a smaller proportion of your neighbors than you do if you are a resident of a smaller community. But, for the most part, this fact has few significant consequences. It does not necessarily follow that if you know few of your neighbors you will know no one else.Even in very large cities, people maintain close social ties within small, private social worlds. Indeed, the number and quality of meaningful relationships do not differ between more and less urban people. Small-town residents are more involved with kin than are big-city residents. Yet city dwellers compensate by developing friendships with people who share similar interests and activities. Urbanism may produce a different stifle of life, but the quality of life does not differ between town and city. Nor are residents of large communities any likelier to display psychological symptoms of stress or alienation, a feeling of not belonging, than are residents of smaller communities. However, city dwellers do worry more about crime, and this leads them to a distrust of strangers.These findings do not imply that urbanism makes little or no difference. If neighbors are strangers to one another, they are less likely to sweep the sidewalk of an elderly couple living next door or keep an eye out for young trouble makers. Moreover; as Wirth suggested, there may be a link between a community’s population size and its social heterogeneity. For instance, sociologists have found much evidence that the size of a community is associated with bad behavior including gambling, drugs, etc. Large-city urbanites are also more likely than their small-town counterparts to have a cosmopolitan outlook, to display less responsibility to traditional kinship roles, to vote for leftist political candidates, and to be tolerant of nontraditional religious groups, unpopular political groups, and so—called undesirables. Everything considered, heterogeneity and unusual behavior seem to be outcomes of large population size. One of the consequences of urban life is that impersonal relationships among neighbor ?()
A. disrupt people’s natural relations
B. make them worry about crime
C. cause them not to show concern for one another
D. cause them to the suspicious of each other
If I were asked to give what I consider the single most useful bit of advice for all humanity, it would be this: Expect trouble as an inevitable part of life and, when it comes, hold your head high, look it squarely in the eye and say, "I will be bigger than you. You cannot defeat me." Then repeat to yourself the most comforting of all words, "This too shall pass." To forgive oneself in the face of a devastating experience is perhaps the most difficult of life’s challenges. Most of us find it much easier to forgive others. In many instances we can’t control what happens to us, but we can control our reactions to what happens to us. We can stay down for the count and be carried out of the ring or we can pull ourselves back to our feet. If we are victimized by others, we must refuse to give them the power to break our spirit, make us physically ill, perhaps even shorten our lives. Most doctors will tell you that worry, anxiety, tension and anger can make you sicker than a virus.
Finding the Lost FreedomChildren’s independent access to their local streets may be important for their own personal, mental and psychological development. Allowing them to know their own neighborhood and community gives them a "sense of place". This depends on "active exploration". which is not provided for when children are passengers in cars. (Such children may see more, but they learn less.) Not only is it important that children be able to get to local play areas by themselves, but walking and cycling journeys to school and to other destinations provide genuine play activities in themselves.There are very significant time and money costs their children to school, sport and to other locations. For parents associated with transporting.Tile reduction in children’s freedom may also contribute to a weakening of the sense of local community. As fewer children and adults use the streets as pedestrians, these streets become less sociable place. There is less opportunity for children and adults to have the spontaneous exchanges that help to engender a feeling of community. This in itself may exacerbate fears associated with assault and molestation of children, because there are fewer adults available to know their neighbors’ children, and who can look out for their safety.The extra traffic involved in transporting children results in increased traffic congestion, pollution and accident risk. As our roads become more dangerous, more parents drive their children to more places, thus contributing to increased levels of danger for the remaining pedestrians. Anyone who has experienced either the reduced volume of traffic in peak hour during school holidays, or the traffic jams near school at the end of a school day, will not need convincing about these points. Thus, there are also important environmental implications of children’s loss of freedom.As individuals, parents strive to provide the best upbringing they can for their children. However, in doing so, (e. g. by driving their children to sport, school or recreation) parents may be contributing to a more dangerous environment for children generally. The idea that streets are for cars and backyards and playgrounds are for children’s is a strongly held belief, and parents have little choice as individuals but to keep their children off the streets if they want to protect their safety.In many parts of Dutch cities, and some traffic-calmed precincts in Germany, residential streets are now places where cars must give way to pedestrians. In these areas, residents are accepting the view that the function of streets is not solely to provide mobility for cars. Streets may also be for social interaction, walking, cycling and playing. One of the most important aspects of these European cities, in terms of giving cities hack to children, has been a range of "traffic calming" initiatives, aimed at reducing the volume speed of traffic. These initiatives have had complex interactive effects, leading to a sense that children have been able to do this in safety. Recent research has demonstrated that children in many German cities have significantly higher levels of freedom to travel to places in their own neighborhood or city than children in other cities in the world.Modifying cities in order to enhance children’s self-awareness will become more environmentally sustainable, as well as more sociable and more livable for all city residents. Perhaps it will be our concern for our children’s welfare that convinces us that we need to challenge the dominance of the car in our cities.41.Children should play______.42.In some German towns, pedestrians______.43.Streets should also be used for______.44.Reducing the amount Of traffic and the speed is______.45.All people who live in the city will benefit if cities______. 42()
A. traffic calming
B. a dangerous environment
C. on residential streets
D. modified
E. neighborhoods
F. socializing
G. in backyards
Text 1In the villages of the English countryside there are still people who remember the good old days when no one bothered to lock their doors. There simply wasn’t any crime to worry about. Amazingly, these happy times appear still to be with us in the world’s biggest community. A new study by Dan Farmer, a gifted programmer, using an automated investigative program of his own called SATAN, shows that the owners of well over half of all World Wide Web sites have set up home without fitting locks to their doors.SATAN can try out a variety of well-known hacking tricks on an Internet site without actually breaking in. Farmer has made the program publicly available, amid much criticism. A person with evil intent could use it to hunt down sites that are easy to burgle.But Farmer is very concerned about the need to alert the public to poor security and, so far, events have proved him right. SATAN has done more to alert people to the risks than cause new disorder.So is the Net becoming more secure Far from it. In the early days, when you visited a Web site your browser simply looked at the content. Now the Web is full of tiny programs that automatically download when you look at a Web page, and run on your own machine. These programs could, if their authors wished, do all kinds of nasty things to your computer.At the same time, the Net is increasingly populated with spiders, worms, agents and other types of automated beasts designed to penetrate the sites and seek out and classify information. All these make wonderful tools for antisocial people who want to invade weak sites and cause damage.But let’s look on the bright side. Given the lack of locks, the Internet is surely the world’s biggest (almost) crime-free society. Maybe that is because hackers are fundamentally honest. Or that there currently isn’t much to steal. Or because vandalism isn’t much fun unless you have a peculiar dislike for someone.Whatever the reason, let’s enjoy it while we can. But, expect it ail to change, and security to become the number one issue, when the most influential inhabitants of the Net are selling Services they want to be paid for. The author suggests in the last paragraph that ().
A. we should make full use of the Internet before security measures are strengthened
B. we should alert the most influential businessmen to the importance of security
C. influential businessmen should give priority to the improvement of Net security
D. net inhabitants should not let security measures affect their joy of surfing the Internet